Random Post-Election Thoughts

I was working all day in Ward 65, in the City of Madison. When we finally finished remaking ballots and tallying votes, Hillary Clinton and Russ Feingold easily had more than 90% of the vote. We had one vote for Jill Stein, out of about 2700 cast.

Then the poll workers started checking their phones. Russ Feingold had already conceded, and by the time I drove home at 11:00 pm, NPR was projecting Iowa for Trump, giving him 244 electoral votes of the 270 needed for election. This was without Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, all too close to call.

So Trump will be President. That is very hard to take. Here are my other reactions.

1. Climate change, climate change, climate change. There won’t be a livable world left if the US doesn’t take the lead in reducing/eliminating carbon emissions. And we won’t do a damn thing under Trump and an enabling Republican congress.

2. Related to this: scientific research. Someone who rejects all the science on climate change just might not be interested in investments in scientific research. And that also clouds the future of the country.

3. What will happen to immigrants and children of immigrants? My son spent hours this morning on Facebook with his friends who are now feeling that this country never wanted them here. My son’s friends are in their early twenties and incredibly talented, educated, productive human beings: the very people this country needs to develop its future. A law professor friend, well-established in her field, is wondering whether she should return to the country her parents fled years ago, where she may find herself more welcome.

This country is founded on immigrants, renews itself with immigrants, gives succor to immigrants and refugees, and maintains ties with other countries through the families of immigrants. But a Trump presidency could change all that by removing all these wonderful people from this country, and removing their hope, their aspirations, and their vigor from this country.

4. The enabling of the white supremacists is frightening to the core. Trump claims he is not one of them, but he has done nothing to shut them down. The future of the movement is now,

5. The combination of immigration “initiatives” and white supremacy, I fear, will lead to renewed and reinvigorated suppression of minorities in this country. I want to know what was the impact of voter suppression on the results in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, and other states? When those in power don’t respect the right to vote, many citizens may just give up, and that is suppression.

6. One of the saddest things about this election is that Trump claimed to be “taking back” the country for a specific group of people — the working class. He said “we” will take back country, inserting himself into that slice of the population. But the United States is not just the working class, or the middle class, nor is it one race or another. It is a unique melding of ALL races, ALL classes, ALL ethnic groups, immigrants AND people with family histories reaching to the Revolution, small town AND urban dwellers, educated AND uneducated — or at least that’s how I grew up thinking about this country.

The United States, and the people of the United States, are a sum of our parts. We have lost that sense of unity, and I don’t know if we can ever get it back.

At first, I too was devastated, but having survived many personal tragedies in my eighty five years including the death of a son from an aneurysm and and a daughter in an auto accident, both in their twenties, I have learned to accept that which I cannot change and work like hell to change that which I can.

And so I will!

Trump is very vain and so he will work to curry favor with the public as well as earn a favorable historical image We should also be encouraged that in the past he was democrat-friendly..

I offer two old sayings: “Life goes on” and my favorite by Winston Churchill in the darkest days of WWII: “Never give up; never, never, never.”

I don’t think these thoughts are “whining.” They are instead about the direction that the new, gerrymandered majority in Washington will want to take the nation… and what will and will not be ignored. Number one is climate change. Number two is addressing the increased diversity of the population, like it or not. Hence, the continued push for voter suppression. Numbers three and four will not be ignored, Three is eliminating health insurance for 20 million people so the rest of the country can join Wisconsin as a leader among states with lots of uninsured people. And number four is the current structure of trade, financial and security arrangements that has held up pretty well since the fall of the wall in 1989, despite global recession, Putin and the inevitable convulsions in the Middle East. Someone with the attention level of a second grader and a compliant congress who airs a closing argument on teevee about “global” [Jewish] elites and a Bannon at his right elbow is not going to care a whit about the agreements and treaties that underlie that order. So yes, Erik, warm up to him. The rest of us with some sense will do what we can deal with the fallout of this primal scream of the dissatisfied.

I haven’t posted here in a long time – just got burned out of politics in general & life got busy.

When I came home from coaching basketball practice the other night, I was really shocked – and that’s really not changed. Quite frankly, I honestly believed that Trump didn’t actually want to win – that you just wouldn’t say some of the things he said on the campaign trail if he did. Whoever it was from his campaign that managed to wrestle away his twitter login should probably be credited with winning the election.

I’ve been mostly a conservative all my life. Really majorly disliked the Clintons, especially Hillary. In the past, I have voted for third party for President when I just didn’t believe in good conscious that I could cast my ballot for either of the two major candidates. This time around, I held my nose and voted for Hillary. Because despite all the negative things I think about her, I just couldn’t comprehend Trump actually governing. I know there’s a lot of hyperbole – I know that the fact of the matter is there’s only so much a President can actually do, etc. But the guy just does not remotely belong in ANY public office, let alone that one.

I blame the Republicans for letting him get control of their party. I give Paul Ryan a tiny bit of credit for standing up to Trump but he should have done more and others would have joined him. Years ago that was my party – some time back, that became untrue. But with this election cycle…well one of the few positives is that I think that Trump may lay waste to the party and they deserve it.

I blame the Democrats for running probably the only candidate that could’ve actually lost to Trump. And obviously what they did to get her the nomination makes it even worse. They’re getting what they deserve as well.

I blame the media big time. Early on & in the primary, so much of the media treated him with kid gloves. I think they wanted him to win the nomination because they thought he’d be easy for the Democrats to beat. And frankly, just for the sport of it. The idiotic things he said early on that they let pass. And of course once he got the nomination, they changed their song. But at that point, the damage was done. Their change of tune was so caustic, and more importantly, they treated those who supported Trump with such contempt that it reached a point where it really didn’t matter what he said any more or how much they tried to vilify him, it just strengthened their resolve. Out of touch doesn’t begin to describe it – at least part of this fiasco was caused by the disjoint between the coasts and fly over country. It was a case of crying wolf too often at previous candidates – when a true wolf arrived many didn’t believe them.

Obviously Hillary’s campaign deserves a fair amount of blame. Maybe, just maybe instead of flying over Wisconsin, a stop or two might have helped, huh? She might well be more intelligent than her husband. But her lack of charisma and more importantly, lack of political acumen was clear.

Cleary many Obama supporters and/or Sanders supporters simply did not come out to vote for Clinton. So some of that’s on them as well.

There are obviously vast divides in this country. Racial, social, rural/urban and on and on. Yes, hucksters prey on them and manipulate them. But it’s not one way street – quite honestly it’s on all of us and goes every direction to listen & treat others with respect and kindness.

If Hillary had won, I would have thought, “Good, we don’t have that buffoon Trump”.
Well. Trump won, so now I can say, “Good, we don’t have Crooked Hillary and more of the Clinton’s”.
(I voted for neither.)

I recall a Myron Buchholtz campaign video in his unsuccessful bid for Congress (3rd District, WI): scenes of closed manufacting plants in Wisconsin with resultant unemployment and lowered standard of living by those affected by NAFTA, and totally ignored by our politicians. None of the Presidents in the last 24 years has paid attention to the poverty on Main Street (too busy pandering to Wall Street and other special interests).

My search for the Buchholtz video was unsuccessful, so maybe the following might shed light on why so many chose Trump.